


astrophil and stella (how are my heartstrings bent)

by MisabeltheMiserable



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Episode: s01e01 Pilot, Episode: s03e11 City of Angels?, F/M, Season/Series 01, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, kill me it's a soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:22:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24134272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MisabeltheMiserable/pseuds/MisabeltheMiserable
Summary: Some people just didn’t have marks. It happened. Chloe had lived her whole life knowing that she didn't have a soulmate, and never would. And then one unremarkable day in 2011, a dark, seven-pointed star wrote itself onto her wrist.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 170
Kudos: 433





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Soulmate AU???? Why??? Who can say

Some people just didn’t have marks. It happened. Chloe’s wrist had been blank at birth, and for all her parents had hovered and fretted, it had stayed unmarked and impassive her whole life. In a lot of ways, it made things simpler. Chloe had never struggled with feelings of guilt for being in other relationships, nor had she had to worry about her life passing her by while waiting for an anonymous soulmate, somewhere out there in the world.

When her dad died, watching her mother’s drowning, consuming grief only solidified Chloe’s conviction that life was simpler without a soulmate. True, it didn’t make for a very Hallmark-movie life, but it gave her a practical outlook that stood her in good stead on entering the LAPD at the age of twenty.

Dating Dan was...nice. Nothing to shout from the rooftops about, she supposed, but nice. They both wanted a family, so when she got pregnant and Dan proposed marriage, Chloe had figured this was her happy-ever-after. Maybe she just wasn’t cut out for the kind of love she saw in films - but that was okay, Dan was great, and Trixie became the shining centre of her world as soon as she felt her baby’s first kick. 

For the first couple of years of marriage, Chloe was happier than she ever thought she would be. They were both working hard to make detective, and with the extra years on the force under his belt, Dan got his promotion just before Trixie turned two. He spent more time at work, but she understood, and picked up the slack with Trixie when he needed her to. Starting a new job was difficult.

It got harder when Dan’s long hours on the job started bleeding into their home life more and more. Chloe was still working to make detective, and it was an unpleasant surprise to figure out that Dan wasn’t as supportive of her as she’d always been of him. They started fighting, which they’d never really done before. Arguments, sure, but never hissed shouting matches over the kitchen table while Trixie slept in her cot in the other room.

Still, things were...okay, mostly. Chloe was holding her relationship together, even if sometimes it felt like a white-knuckle grip. She didn’t want to look at the cracks that were forming in their chassis, didn’t want to strip away the comforting illusions and see the truth of the damage. A failed marriage before she was thirty wasn’t something that she wanted to contemplate.

But fault lines grow. Once they begin, the slightest touch can worsen them. They stretch spindly fingers and the cracks spread, find other weak spots, and slowly, slowly, infest a surface with gaping rifts. Chloe had thought that perhaps with Dan, she had escaped the ever-present issue of soulmates, and soul marks, and the whole wretched business. Dan had a soulmate out there, somewhere, or so said the mark on his wrist. He’d always said he didn’t put much stock in it, and certainly wasn’t waiting around for her to appear. But sometimes -  _ sometimes _ \- Chloe wondered if that was really how he felt. When things got bad between them, she’d see him looking at his wrist, stroking his thumb over the mark. His eyes would flicker to the empty skin of her wrist, to her eyes, and guiltily away again.

Perhaps it was unfair, perhaps it was only a few moments of weakness, but she was sure she knew what he was thinking.  _ There is a woman, somewhere out there, who’s all for me. Perfect for me. And it isn’t Chloe.  _ The defensive, angry hurt that her own thoughts bred was a poison. It spread through her and made her cold, freezing him out.

Maybe by that point, the end of their marriage had already been inevitable. Maybe not. She didn’t know. Whatever  _ might  _ have happened, it didn’t really matter. What  _ did _ happen, happened one deceptively mundane morning in 2011. At breakfast, Dan was flipping through the paper on one side of the table, and Chloe, on the other, was trying to convince Trixie that she  _ did  _ in fact want to eat her oatmeal, instead of painting with it. The searing, burning heat on the inside of her wrist was so shocking, so bewilderingly unexpected that she screamed from the agony of it, dropping Trixie’s spoon on the floor and rearing backwards from...nothing. Nothing had burnt her, and the pain was gone as soon as it had arrived, leaving only a slight, bruised ache, nothing that would make sense of what she had just felt.

The surprise of her outburst had made Dan jump, and Trixie started wailing from the fright. She could feel him staring incredulously at her across the table, but pulled back the cuff of her shirt slowly, as a horrible suspicion crept over her. Dan, evidently recognising that she wasn’t going to do anything about the screaming toddler at her side, stood up and pulled their daughter into his arms. 

He bounced her lightly, then glared down at Chloe. “You wanna tell me what that was?” She didn’t reply. “Chloe?” Nothing. “Chloe, what the hell?” He stepped around the table.

She didn’t even think to try and hide the bold, black, seven-pointed star that now stood out on the inside of her left wrist. What would be the point? She didn’t look up when Dan drew in a short, choked-off breath, his body going still as he stared down at the mark that shouldn’t be - couldn’t be - but  _ was _ there. Trixie wailed in his arms, not liking the tension that now sung like a subsonic frequency through the room.

After a long, long minute, Dan put Trixie back in her highchair and walked out, snatching up his jacket and keys as he went. The front door slammed, jolting Chloe out of her head. She comforted her daughter, waited for the sitter to arrive, and drove to work alone, trying desperately all the while to make sense of what  _ did not make sense _ . Soul marks just  _ didn’t  _ appear out of the blue - they were present at birth, or not at all, and there was no inbetween. From everything Chloe had ever known, she shouldn’t have been able to grow a soul mark any more than she should be able to grow a new head. She kept glancing down at it as she drove, even coming close to an accident a couple of times. Maybe she shouldn’t be going into work today. Probably. But she was too afraid of what this new... _ thing _ might mean to even consider staying at home with her thoughts.

At the precinct, Chloe was assigned to the front desk, which at least meant she wouldn’t have to face Dan immediately. Throughout the morning, in quiet moments between paperwork and taking statements from members of the public, she would peel back the cuff of her shirt and just...stare. She’d never paid too much attention to other people’s soul marks, but even she knew that they weren’t supposed to look like that. Every mark she had ever seen was an outline, just simple black lines making up a unique shape that matched an identical mark on the other’s wrist. But this was block colour, a bold, black star that pointed in seven directions, and stood out starkly on her skin. It was even slightly raised; she could feel the edges on her skin when she ran her fingers over it.

Her day took a turn from surreal to bizarre when a tall, African-American man walked in and reported that he had been robbed by a Mr Jack O’Lantern. The subsequent investigation that indirectly ensued was so consistently weird that she  _ almost _ forgot about her new mark. Although she and Dan were working the case together, they both seemed to have come to an unspoken agreement to not talk until they wrapped it up, for which Chloe could only feel grateful. She had, quite literally, no idea what she was going to say to him.

As it turned out, in the end there wasn’t much to talk about. Perhaps the undercurrent of relief she felt when Dan brought up divorce should have disturbed her. She was sad, of course, to see her marriage slip away as though it could simply be washed away with the tide. Upset for Trixie’s sake, that her little girl would come from a broken home, and grow up with parents who couldn’t love each other as they should. Angry, even, at Dan for giving up so easily, but more so at herself, for wanting him to.

She and Trixie moved into her mom’s beach house while the trial separation played itself out. Inevitably, Penelope found out about her new mark, though she kept it covered as much as she could. At her mother’s urging, Chloe visited doctors to ask how,  _ why _ this had happened, although it did no good. The first doctor merely gaped unprofessionally, said ‘fascinating’ a lot and asked to write a paper on her. Chloe declined less than politely and left. The second doctor obviously hadn’t believed her, inferring that she’d merely had a soul mark tattooed on when nature had failed to provide one. The medical profession clearly didn’t have answers, and the internet only told her nonsense about seven-pointed stars being associated with various random cults or alchemical figures. After a while, it was simpler to just focus on her daughter, her career, and try to forget the weird, unnatural mark on her wrist. If its appearance had portended something, then she’d just have to wait for it to turn up, like every other person with a soul mark.

She managed, more or less, for five years. The nagging mystery never really went away, but Chloe got so used to it that most days she never thought of it at all. But today, it was...itchy. Well. not  _ physically _ itchy, but she felt uncomfortably  _ aware _ of it, and the feeling only increased as she arrived at her first crime scene of the night - a drive-by shooting of a famous singer, Delilah. Dan walked her through it, urging her as he always did to find the easiest answer and close the case as soon as she could. His patronising manner had only worsened in the months since Palmetto, and the added irritant of her bizarrely sensitive mark made her snappish and short-tempered.

The sole witness was plinking away at a piano in the center of the club, Lux, of which he was apparently the owner. Chloe’s already frayed temper flared at his casual demeanor. He hadn’t even looked at her, just told her his ridiculous name in his ridiculous accent when she asked.

“Lucifer Morningstar.”

She wanted to raise her eyebrows in disbelief, but tried to stay professional. “Lucifer Morningstar.” She wrote down the name in her notepad, pausing to scratch absently at her wrist. “Is that a stage name or something?”

Giving an irritating little chuckle, Lucifer Morningstar looked up. “God-given, I’m af…” He trailed off, his smirk falling off his face as their eyes met. Just as she was about to ask what was wrong, her wrist blazed with bright, burning pain for the second time in her life, and she cried out, dropping her notepad to clamp a hand over her mark. In the midst of the shock, it took a moment to register that Mr. Morningstar had done exactly the same thing, doubling over his piano keys. Their eyes found each other again, and they stared with mirroring, wide-eyed expressions.

  
“What the  _ hell?” _ Chloe panted, one trembling hand still gripping her wrist.


	2. Chapter 2

“What the _hell?”_ Chloe panted, one trembling hand still gripping her wrist.

“My sentiments exactly.” It was probably meant to sound suave, but with a shaking voice and eyes the size of saucers, Mr. Morningstar couldn’t quite pull it off. He rose to his feet, and oh, he was _tall,_ and stepped very, very close to her. She could have backed away, probably _should_ have backed away, but she just gaped at him with round eyes as he took hold of her wrist, tugging it out of her other hand’s grasp.

The seven-pointed star on her skin looked smugly up at them both, but it had changed, as soulmarks did when they found their match. Most changed from a simple grey outline to a simple black outline, but hers had gained new lines altogether, a pearlescent white outline now gleaming faintly around the edges of the star before it faded back into her skin.

Slowly, he turned over his own wrist, exposing her mark’s twin. Every detail was identical. There could be no doubt.

“Well,” said Mr. Morningstar, sounding rather stumped, “I did wonder.”

“Uh, yeah, so did I.” She still wasn’t any the wiser, really.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Detective Decker. I mean - Chloe. Detective Chloe Decker.”

Mr. Morningstar nodded, his eyes finding hers again. They were so, _so_ dark, so deeply brown that she could swear they were black. “So this is what it’s like. Hm,” he hummed as though he’d learned something interesting.

“What?”

“Soul mates.” She could hear how he said it as two words, as though he was trying them out. “Is it how you expected?”

“Uh, don’t know. I didn’t really think about it until five years ago.”

“Oh,” his eyebrows rose inquiringly. “Is that when…” he jerked his head down to their marks.

“Yeah. I didn’t have one before then. Unmarked.”

“I suppose that makes sense,” he commented, nodding. 

“What? How does it make sense?” Frowning, she retracted her arm, folding both across her chest.

Mr. Morningstar watched her mark as it disappeared from his sight, then flicked her eyes back up to hers. “That’s when I arrived here. When mine appeared.”

She frowned harder. “What does--?” A uniform called her name from across the room, and she turned away from Mr. Morningstar to give the officer her attention. When she turned back to him, it was like a shutter had come down between them. Mr. Morningstar resumed a more appropriate distance, and Chloe remembered what she was supposed to be doing here.

Even so, the interview didn’t really get _less_ weird, from there. Quite apart from his claim of having had a chat with the very _dead_ shooter about why he’d killed the vic, and his insistence that there was more to Delilah’s death than met the eye, there was also Mr. Morningstar’s explanation for how he’d emerged from a hailstorm of bullets without a single scratch.

“The benefits of immortality,” he said with a smug sip of his drink. What was with this guy?

He wasn’t finished. “What will your corrupt little organisation do about this?”

“Excuse me?”

“Will you find the person responsible? Will they be punished? Will this be a priority for you? Because it is for me.” 

She narrowed her eyes. “You got some balls on you, pal.”

“Oh, thank you, but they’re really quite average. And while we’re on that subject,” he leaned forward.”Would you like to explain exactly _how_ you’re my _soulmate,”_ (this time he said it with a moue of distaste that put Chloe’s back up) “when I know for a fact that it’s impossible.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind knowing that either,” she replied, her jaw set. She didn’t try to hide the animosity in her eyes, but that just seemed to faintly amuse him. “We’re done here.” She turned away.

“Detective, wait!” Mocking smile disappearing, he caught her wrist, fingers brushing over the inky black star, and she jerked her arm away. “Someone out there needs to be punished, and we need to finish our conversation - we’re not _done.”_

She looked him over. This guy? _This guy_ was supposed to be her soulmate? No. No way. Absolutely _not._ There had to be some cosmic screw-up, a terrible mistake made by biology and coincidence. “Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

All set to walk away and out of his life forever, Chloe still found herself stopping short when he spoke again.

“Detective, please.” That arrogance, that callousness with an edge of rage, was gone. She looked back at him. His expression was gravely serious. “I need to know how this could happen.” He gestured expansively between them.

She wavered. However grating this guy was, she guessed he was as confused and unsettled as she was, and just as much in need of an explanation. “Look, I - fine. Fine, okay. I’m probably going to be busy with this case for the next couple of days, but…” Rummaging around in her jacket pocket, Chloe pulled out a card. “That has my cell phone number. You can call if you want. About this, or if you have more information about the case,” she added, trying to reassert a professional distance.

He took the card, looking it over with an almost hungry curiosity. “Alright, Detective. I’ll be in touch.”

*

Over the next day, Chloe genuinely thought that might be the end of it. From what little she’d observed about Mr. Morningstar, she didn’t think he was the type to welcome the monogamy-and-commitment connotations of finding your soulmate. And, as someone who had neither faith in the idea of soulmates or a good track record with relationships, she wasn’t too thrilled either. Maybe on reflection, Mr. Morningstar would just decide that even with the unanswerable questions that would nag at them both for the rest of their respective lives, getting embroiled in this wasn’t worth it.

That was not, of course, what happened.

She followed her gut on the Delilah case, running the dead shooter’s cell phone and finding the last person he’d called - 2Vile, a rapper, and apparently Delilah’s ex. She was halfway to 2Vile’s Hollywood address when her phone started buzzing on the dashboard, and accepted the call unthinkingly.

“Decker.”

_“Detective Decker! So glad to have reached you.”_

“Mr. Morningstar?” She blinked. “I’m afraid I can’t talk right now.”

_“No, no, that’s not why I’m calling.”_

“Oh.” Hesitating, she wondered if there was a way to make this sound _not_ rude. “Why are you calling, then?”

_“I’m…”_ He trailed off, and when he spoke again, sounded strangely frustrated. _“I’m not entirely sure. I thought you would like to know about a potential - lead? Is that what you call it? In Delilah’s case.”_

“Right, what is it?”

_“I paid a visit to Jimmy Barnes, Delilah’s ex-fiance, and ex-manager. I’ve no idea if you follow this sort of thing, but she left him at the altar, it was all very messy. Now, he claimed to have no knowledge of the whole affair, but he did point me towards the man Delilah left him for - a rapper with the unfortunate name of ‘2Vile’, if you can credit it.”_

What the hell was he doing? “Mr. Morningstar, what the hell are you doing?”

_“Currently? Borrowing a lovely lady’s cellphone to give you this very useful piece of information.”_ Chloe could hear the oozing charm on the words ‘lovely lady’, and she rolled her eyes, able to see in her mind’s eye exactly the leer he must have directed at whoever had been talked into lending him a phone.

“No, what the hell are you doing trying to investigate this? You’re an unqualified, and _unsupervised_ civilian. This isn’t your job, it’s _mine.”_

_“Punishing the guilty is very much my job, Detective, you might say it’s my raison d’être. Or at least it was. I’m coming out of retirement for this one.”_

What? Shaking her head, Chloe tightened her grip on the wheel. “Alright, leaving aside whatever the hell that means, I don’t need your help. I found out about 2Vile myself, I’m already halfway to his address.”

_“Oh, what a coincidence! I’m outside the gate. See you in there, then, Detective.”_ There was a note of provocation in his voice.

“Do _not_ enter that property, Mr. Morningst--” The line went dead, and she cursed, pressing her foot tighter to the gas. “God _dammit.”_ If her instincts about Mr Morningstar’s arrogant recklessness were right, she could be about to walk into a situation that was going _very_ south, _very_ rapidly. Or, knowing the reputation of the people that 2Vile reportedly kept around him, she might be about to walk into the murder scene of her - of Mr. Morningstar.

A cold breath of dread crept down her spine. What would happen if he died? Her mother had never talked about what it actually _felt_ like - the moment you felt your soulmate died. Did it hurt? The lines of Penelope’s mark had gone grey, fading as they sat in the hospital, already knowing what the doctor was going to tell them. Chloe’s mark was different, though, a bold, block colour that drew the gaze the way a black hole draws in everything around it. Would the whole thing fade to grey? Or would this weird, cosmic glitch simply reset, the mark disappearing from her skin as though it had never been there at all?

She found she didn’t want to find out. Her palms were sweating as she pulled up to 2Vile’s tacky mansion and demanded entrance from the butler, keeping him in front of her and her gun drawn as she marched through the property.

“LAPD! Guns down! On the floor, down! You two, against the wall” Yelling those forbidding words was actually somewhat of a comfort, however tense she felt. They were words she _knew,_ part of a matched set with her badge and hard-ass attitude, part of the steely self-control that she felt this soulmark nonsense trying to shake from her. She didn’t let the relief show on her face when Mr. Morningstar piped up from the centre of the stand-off.

“Detective, welcome to the party! A bit late, though, I’ve already got everything we need. You must drive like a nonagenarian.”

Her relief rapidly flaring into anger, Chloe ignored him firmly, keeping an eye on the various other occupants of the room, and barked an order at the butler. “Grab the bucket, collect the guns. Now!” Only when that was done did she look at Mr. Morningstar. “You need to leave.” Not giving him a chance to respond, she addressed 2Vile. “You were listed as the last person that Delilah’s shooter called before he killed her.”

“C’mon, man,” 2Vile mumbled.

“Talk to me about Delilah.”

“We’ve been over that one, Detective,” butted in Mr. Morningstar.

“And why you called the shooter two days before she was murdered,” Chloe persisted, refusing to look at him, though she could feel his gaze on her. It felt - admiring, although she didn’t know why.

“Fine. Yeah, I called Eddie ‘cause he hooks me up sometimes. He met Delilah through me. Whatever, don’t make me a killer, do it?” 2Vile finished defensively.

“No,” she replied blandly, “but it does make you a suspect.” Mr. Morningstar’s head was swivelling between them gleefully.

“What, so everyone on Eddie’s phone’s a suspect? Are you _joking?”_ 2Vile scoffed. “You gonna drag half of Hollywood downtown. Be like the Oscars or something.” He smirked, evidently very pleased with his little joke.

Chloe opened her mouth to fire back when the groupie behind 2Vile stepped forward to point an interrogative finger at her, and the whole thing went from bad to worse.

“Wait, aren’t you that chick from that film?”

“Hmm, what’s this, what film?” Mr. Morningstar asked eagerly, pivoting to look at her again.

“She used to be an actress or something, right?”

Resignation swept her. She conceded it with a clenched jaw and a dip of her head, knowing the only thing she could do was ride out the ensuing ridicule.

“That teen movie, I forget what it’s called.”

Mr Morningstar apparently felt he needed to chip in to her humiliation as well. “Of course, _Hot Tub High School!_ _That’s_ where I know you from!”

“Let’s just stick to my questions, shall we? So--”

“The one with the famous nude scene!” He was barely even addressing her anymore, and Chloe felt the humiliation burn into anger, too. She’d never wanted to punch anyone in the face more - had she’d really been concerned for his safety? _Really?_

He gushed about that goddamn nude scene, finally turning back to her to tell her. “That was quite a nude scene!” The bizarre thing was, he didn’t actually seem to be trying to embarrass her, instead looking genuinely impressed, which only enraged her further.

“I have far too many bullets in this thing for you to still be talking,” she pinned him with a look, and turned back to 2Vile. “You, we need to have a conversation right now.”

“That’s a waste of time, Detective,” Mr. Morningstar insisted. “I’ve just threatened his life, he’s not our guy. He would’ve said, trust me.”

She closed her eyes for a second. “You did _what?”_

“Yeah, isn’t that illegal?” Broke in 2Vile.

“Uh, little bit, yeah.” _Screw_ this whole godforsaken day. “You, stay put,” she ordered 2Vile, “You, you’re coming with me.”

Snapping handcuffs over Mr. Morningstar’s wrists, she pointedly _didn’t_ think about where her fingers brushed over the raised edges of his mark, and dragged him out of the mansion as he chattered away, unfazed by captivity. She was very, _very_ pissed off, and told him so plainly.

“Right, I _can_ get out these, you know,” he replied, unruffled.

“Funny.” She pulled open the car door, only to freeze when he pulled the open handcuffs out from behind his back, dangling them from two fingers. How the…?

“How’d you do that?” Snatching them back, Chloe refused to show how disconcerted she was on her face.

He sighed, frustration creeping into his expression. “Come one, we’re wasting time, we should be out there solving a homicide, and punishing those responsible!” She stood firm, but he was insistent on being included in the case.

“I have a certain skill set,” he said smugly. Who the _hell_ did he think he was? “I can be very persuasive with people and tend to see things that others cannot.”

“So, you’re psychic or something?”

“No, I can’t read people’s minds, I’m not a _Jedi,”_ he scoffed, as though that was any more ridiculous than whatever he was suggesting. “People just like to tell me things.”

“Just...tell you things. Just confess their sins, just like that.” She regarded him incredulously, honestly not able to tell if he was making fun of her, or whether he really thought this was true.

“No, not their sins, I have no power over people’s sins,” he sighed, as though he’d had to make this distinction many times before. “I actually get a bad rap for that. I have the ability to draw out people’s forbidden desires. The more simple the human, the easier it is. The more complex, the more challenging and exciting, really. But no, the actual sins - the sins are on you people,” he finished assuredly.

"‘You people’?” As though he was somehow different to her. She thought for a second, before it clicked. “I got it. I got it! The name? The whole Lucifer thing? And desire's, like, your superpower.”

“Mm, it's more like a gift from God really.” She just levelled a flat look at him. This guy was a piece of work. “Okay, look,” shifting his weight, he looked directly into her eyes as though he could see through the back of them and into her brain. “Tell me, Detective, what do you desire more than anything else in this life?”

She raised her eyebrows. “This is it? This is your big trick?” He inclined his head, as though inviting her to play along. Okay, fine, if he was going to try and make a fool out of her in whatever weird little game this was, she’d make a fool of him right back. Widening her eyes and slackening her features, she adopted the dewy look which had always got her far as a teenage ingenue. “I guess, when I was a little girl, I...always wanted to be a cop like my daddy, so that...that one day I could help people and…” She really was laying it on ridiculously thick but he seemed to be lapping it up anyway. “And be taken seriously...when I say to shut up, and get in the damn car.”

Mr. Morningstar leaned back, looking rather unnerved. “What? How did you do that?” His eyes narrowed. “Is it a soulmate thing?”

It was the first time either of them had mentioned the dreaded S-word subject since they met, and Chloe _really_ didn’t want to break that streak right now. Losing patience, she opened the car door again. “Get. In. The. Car.” Ready to whip the handcuffs out again, she reached for his arm.

He slipped out of reach. “No, really, is that a soulmate thing?” His gaze was still fixed on hers, with that stare that seemed like it could burrow right through her skull. “No one can do that. _No one.”_

Right. Clearly, he wasn’t shifting until he got some kind of answer. “No one can do _what?”_

“No one can _not_ answer when I ask that question.”

She sighed in frustration. “I haven’t got time for whatever weird game this is. If you wanna play at being the devil, fine, but I’ve got a homicide to solve.”

“Hm.” He seemed to consider her point. “Quite right, Detective. But I’m afraid I need answers, rather pressingly, and this is only going to work if you actually believe me.”

“I’m sorry, believe that you’re the _devil?”_ Was he...serious? He really thought that he was Satan? Worry crept over Chloe - was her - was Mr. Morningstar actually just a deeply delusional man?

“Exactly,” he said cheerfully, and leaned down to slip his hand under the bumper of her car. Before she could ask what the hell he thought he was doing, he deadlifted the entire car four feet off the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's that for now! Chapter 3 is coming soon. Please do leave me a comment if you enjoyed <3


	3. Chapter 3

Balancing the car on its back wheels and looking no more strained than if he were carrying groceries, he gave her a pleasant smile. “See?”

Chloe’s body went rigid from shock and the sweeping cold of deep, instinctive fear. She managed only a few, stumbling steps backwards before her knees locked and she came to an abrupt halt. She was pretty sure some kind of cry had come out of her mouth, but the rushing in her ears overshadowed every sound but that of her own blood pounding.

Lowering the car’s front end carefully and back to the tarmac, Mr. Morningstar brushed his hands off on his pant legs, then stuck his hands in his pockets. At the movement, Chloe’s hand twitched automatically towards her gun. His eyes followed the movement, raising one eyebrow with an air of interest, as though the prospect of getting shot didn’t faze him in the slightest.

When he just stood there, making no further movements or attempts to advance, she forced herself to breathe out. Fight or flight instinct aside, and however panicked her hindbrain was, he hadn’t actually _threatened_ her. Just. Picked up her car. A _car._

With a will of iron, Chloe made her legs unlock and her body move, edging carefully round Mr. Morningstar, who, to his credit, kept still and presented his back to her as she moved around him with a wide berth, keeping him in her direct sight at all times. She put her hand under the bumper and tried to lift. Nothing, obviously. It didn’t budge so much as a millimetre, of course, because it was a fucking _car._ She scanned it with a careful eye, the whole body of the car, even underneath it, but there was nothing, no way it could have been lifted by anything but Mr. Morningstar’s own hand.

With no more movement than a turned head, he watched her with placid amusement in his expression. “Finished?”

She nodded guardedly. _“_ I... _how..._ did you _do_ that?”

“I’m the Devil,” he said unflappably. “Supernatural strength comes with the territory.”

“No, really, how the _hell_ did you do that?”

“I. Am. The. Devil,” he said, pronouncing every syllable with crystal clarity. “ _The_ Lucifer. Satan. Beelzebub. Old Scratch. I’m quite fond of that one, actually,” he added with a grin.

“No. No way. Absolutely not.”

“Well, how do _you_ explain it, then?” He asked in clear exasperation.

“Look, I don’t - I don’t _know,_ I don’t understand what just happened at _all,_ and okay, maybe you are... _something,_ something I can’t explain, but you are not the devil. You _can’t_ be.”

“What? Why can you accept the possibility of the supernatural, but not the possibility that I might be who I say I am?” He demanded, throwing up a hand. “That makes no sense at all!”

She rubbed a hand over her face. “I have lived for the last five years with a soulmark that I wasn't born with, that absolutely _cannot_ exist by any law of nature and has _never_ happened before, as far as I know. But it's there, and if that weren’t enough, it doesn't look like any soulmark anyone has ever seen before.” Shrugging helplessly, she pulled back her sleeve to display it, as though an identical mark didn’t sit on his skin too. “The whole thing is _literally_ impossible. So yeah, over the years, it has occasionally occurred to me that _maybe_ there are things in this world that can't be explained by anything I can understand. And _maybe_ it’s not outside the bounds of possibility that something like that has happened to _me.”_

She drew in a deep breath in a futile attempt to calm down. “But accepting that there is something going on here that might - _might_ be...not natural, is a _very_ different thing to just shrugging my shoulders and saying, sure, okay, you’re _Satan._ As in, _the_ Lucifer. That is beyond insane. I don’t even believe in God, let alone all the rest of that!” She was aware that her voice was skating perilously close to shouting, but wasn’t too concerned with dialling it back just now.

He made a noise of frustration, spinning to walk away for a few paces, before coming right back, apparently having decided that he’d take what victories he could. “Okay, fine. There is more concrete proof I could give you, but it would probably melt your brain, and we’re in a rush. So you don’t _quite_ believe me yet. For now I’ll settle for just an admission that there is something very, very unnatural about the fact that we’ve somehow ended up matched, or bonded, or whatever you call it.”

“Well…” Chloe struggled. She really didn’t want to agree with anything he said at all, on principle, but couldn’t really deny that basic truth. “Yeah. That’s true.”

“I mean, _angels_ don’t even have soulmates, let alone the Devil.”

“Okay.” Closing her eyes, Chloe held up her hands. “Nope. We’re just gonna leave it there. Because in case you’ve forgotten, _I_ still have a homicide to solve and a killer to catch.”

“I haven’t forgotten,” he sounded affronted. “Does this mean I can come with?” He added hopefully.

She gaped at him, the idea of getting into a car with him - the same car that he’d just lifted into the air with one hand - now absolutely unthinkable. “Mr. Morningstar, I--”

“I think you may as well drop the formality and just call me ‘Lucifer’, it’s not as though we haven’t rocketed past the normal standards of polite behaviour anyway.”

“Okay,” she continued, thrown off, “um, Lucifer, I don’t know if I…” she trailed away.

Sighing, Lucifer rolled his eyes. “Honestly, you look like a hare in headlights. I give you my word that I’m absolutely no threat to you, or any of your loved ones, assuming that you have some of those. Alright?”

“Alright,” although it really _wasn’t,_ “but that still gives me no reason to take you with me.”

“Ah, I know something you don’t know,” he said quickly.

Chloe’s look was flat. “Really, what’s that?”

“Won’t say unless you take me with you on this.” She wavered, and he could clearly sense it. “Please, come on,” he wheedled, “I got to 2Vile, didn't I?”

“Why do you care about this so much?” She asked, unable to match up this righteous drive with everything else she knew about him. “About Delilah?”

Lucifer’s jaw was set stubbornly. “Look, I just... I just do.” She raised her eyebrows. “Look, if I hadn't meddled with her career, maybe she wouldn't have died.”

That was...a level of personal responsibility and genuine feeling that Chloe honestly hadn’t expected. She looked at him for another moment, then nodded. “Okay. Okay, fine. But if this little clue thing of yours doesn't pan out, these are going back on,” she brandished the handcuffs. “And they're gonna stay on.” It was an utterly empty threat, if what she’d just witnessed was anything to go by, but it made her feel better nonetheless.

Lucifer perked up. “Is that a promise?” He grinned lasciviously for a moment, before it melted mercurially into a slight frown. “You’re still looking a little like you’ve stepped on a rake. Would you like me to drive?” He held his hand out for her car keys and she snatched them away. “Okay, okay!” Holding his hands up in the air, he backed off a couple of steps, but let her strong-arm him into the backseat without complaint. Keeping the flimsy barrier of the metal grille between them was probably as useless a gesture as the handcuffs would be, but it meant she was able to get into an enclosed space with him without feeling that reflexive, knee-jerk fear towards something so _other_ , and frankly, whatever worked was fine with her.

"You'd better not have broken my car," she warned him. He merely smiled winningly. 

Lucifer’s lead about the therapist checked out. “Don’t look so smug. Nothing's panned out yet,” she told him in the rearview mirror.

“No, no, no, it's not that,” he replied with the same aggravating expression on his face. “It's just that I knew that I recognized you.”

Really? _This_ was what he wanted to talk about? “Right. Right, you've seen my boobies. It's exciting,” she narrowed her eyes derisively. “What are you, twelve?”

If her scorn bothered him, it didn’t show. “So is the movie why you've got such a chip on your shoulder?”

“Uh, it's low on the list of things I have to live down, I guess.” A failed marriage, her mother’s disappointment in both her career choices and her relationships, a freakish soulmark that singled her out from every other person on the damn planet, and most recently, the scorn and suspicion of the entire police department - to name a few.

“Right,” Lucifer said as though it made perfect sense to him. “Attractive female cop struggling to be taken seriously in a man's man's world. That it?”

“Yeah, something like that.” Glancing at him in the rearview, she tried to figure out if he was making fun of her.

“Well, they're threatened,” he continued with unabashed candor, “you're clearly smart and have notable instincts. Ignore them. Trust yourself.”

Was he being...nice? No, she didn’t think so. He didn’t strike her as someone to compliment where he didn’t feel the need to. She was pretty sure he was just being honest, which was...kind of touching. The part of herself that had been fighting tooth and nail to prove her worth since she was twenty years old sat back and blinked in confusion. Then the Bluetooth in her ear beeped an incoming call, and she was saved from having to examine Lucifer’s statement and frank gaze too closely. “Detective Decker.” She listened for a moment. “Alright, text it to me. Thanks.”

“What’s that?” She could practically see Lucifer’s ears pricking up in the back seat.

“What you were saying stands up. There's a Penny Lane who sees a Dr. Linda Martin in Beverly Hills.”

“Excellent,” he said, looking as satisfied as she knew he would. “I'll clear my schedule. And now that I’ve proved my usefulness, can we _finally_ have our conversation ab--?” Her earpiece beeped again, mercifully, and he broke off. “Ooh, someone’s popular.”

“Please stop talking,” she fired at him, hoping to shut him up on both topics, then turned her attention to her call. “Hello? What? You're kidding me, is she okay?” She sighed. “Oh, of course he's not there. Thanks.” She couldn’t remember the last time Dan had actually been on time to pick Trixie from school. “We gotta make a pit stop.”

“What? No, absolutely not,” he protested.

“My kid got into a fight. I got to pick her up.” She studiously avoided his gaze in the mirror, as it occurred to Chloe that some people wouldn’t be thrilled to be saddled with a soulmate who already had a child and ex-husband, as she did. Not that she cared what he thought of her, but she wasn’t in the mood to deal with whatever opinion he might have about it.

Lucifer, to his dubious credit, didn’t bat an eyelash, barely even seeming to register it. “What, can't she get herself home?”

It made sense, Chloe supposed. She was pretty sure they both understood that absolutely nothing was ever going to come of the cosmic gaffe that had taken up residence on their respective wrists. “She's _seven.”_

“Look, I'm not here to help you run errands. I'm here to help you solve a homicide.”

“Really?” She said incredulously, more to herself than to him, and executed a slightly-less-than-legal-U-turn, just to see the look on his face. He didn’t disappoint, tipping over onto the seat beside him before he popped back up again.

There was silence for a minute or two as she drove, before Lucifer broke it. “So I gather from ‘of course he’s not there’ that Mr. Detective, whomever he may be, is no longer on the scene?”

“Uh, no, Dan and I split up about five years ago. We try our best to co-parent, though,” she replied uncomfortably, not sure why she was answering such a personal question at all. The formal distance between the two of them was a bizarre contrast to the inherent, enforced intimacy of their situation.

“Oh, was that because of…?”

“It didn’t help,” she said in a clipped tone. Lucifer didn’t say anything, though she could still feel his curious gaze on the back of her head. “I was unmarked before,” she found herself saying. “Dan having a soulmate somewhere out there never really bothered me, but then when I, uh, _grew_ this mark, it turned out he _did_ mind.”

“What a prat,” Lucifer said unflinchingly. “Hypocritical and a sub-par father, too. Reminds me of Dad.”

Chloe opened her mouth to protest on Dan’s behalf, then shut it again. Much as she shouldn’t enjoy this veritable stranger criticising the father of her child, she couldn’t actually disagree. She cleared her throat. “What about you? What parts of your life did _this_ screw up?” She lifted her wrist vaguely.

“None, really,” Lucifer answered with a shrug. “I’ve wondered about it over the years, of course, but on the whole it’s far too much fun being topside to worry about things that might never happen.”

“‘Topside’? What does that mean?”

“On Earth, Detective,” he explained. “As opposed to Hell.”

“Right,” she said slowly, the unease she’d managed to forget about making its reappearance. “I still don’t believe you.”

“Yet,” Lucifer cheerfully replied, unfazed. “Don’t worry, I’ve got time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Please do leave me a comment if you enjoyed <3


	4. Chapter 4

Lucifer regarded Detective Decker with unabashed interest as she drove, taking in the tension that he’d never yet seen leave her shoulders. Her eyes, reflected in the rearview mirror, occasionally flicked to his, and away again almost immediately. He wondered if it was his scrutiny that was making her uncomfortable, or if it was one of the many other aspects of their...unusual situation.

It was understandable, he supposed. She was only human, and couldn’t help the dreadfully narrow worldview with which she’d been raised. What was impossible to her had been re-written once already, five years ago, and her perceptions of reality were no doubt undergoing another adjustment at this very moment. Still, he couldn’t feel too remorseful about dropping her in it like that - it had been either pick up a car to prove a point, or show her his devil face. Which would, admittedly, have given her more concrete proof, but might also have sent her screaming into the loony bin. And if he was ever going to get to the bottom of this whole soulmate business, it was better to have her brains intact. Moreover, she seemed quite admirable, for a human, and definitely didn’t deserve to be exposed to his true face. He preferred to keep that for those who deserved punishment.

He couldn’t help but pity how extraordinarily complicated her life seemed to have been made by being burdened with this mark. True, her ex sounded like a git, but he’d been led to believe that breakups were rarely pleasant, made worse by the involvement of a child. If it turned out that this whole business was some joke being played by his Father, then it was a remarkably cruel one, even for Him. Especially when the detective’s life seemed to have borne the brunt of whatever weird new punishment this might be. 

Truth be told, after a brief and confusing period of adjustment, having a soulmark had barely had an effect on Lucifer’s day to day existence for the past five years. The searing pain he’d felt the moment he’d broken the surface on that beach had made his vision white out and his knees buckle, and then it was gone, as though it had never been. All that was left in its wake was that mark, black and stark and utterly incomprehensible on a body which hadn’t changed since (very nearly) the beginning of Time.

He hadn’t asked Amenadiel, when his brother came to haul him back to Hell. Obviously Lucifer knew _what_ it was, he just didn’t know _why_ it was. He didn’t feel like showing his meddling, do-gooder brother, and as Amenadiel didn’t seem to know about it already, that meant it was either a plan of their Father’s that the mighty firstborn was not privy to, or it had nothing to do with Dad at all. Maybe a freak occurrence. Maybe it would go away. He certainly didn’t want anything to do with it.

Lucifer had already made his stylish, if involuntary descent to Hell by the time the first humans were born (rather than made), so he’d never found out how the whole soul-bonding process thing worked. Nor had he particularly cared. It was a human thing, and had no effect on him whatsoever. Until, of course, he’d landed on a beach in 2011 A.D. and suddenly, it did.

But how _did_ it affect him, really? So what if he _did_ meet the unfortunate human who bore this mark’s twin? It’s not as though he’d ever care for them at all. There would be one awkward conversation to explain that no, they’d have to cancel the whole soulmate business because some sort of celestial mix-up had occurred, and that would be that. So on the off-chance that this was intended as some kind of punishment, Dad had struck out. The _why_ and _how_ of it all still drove him up the wall, but he’d already struck his deal with Amenadiel, and was far too busy eating, drinking and being very merry _indeed,_ and had neither the time nor the inclination to think about the (apparently) very atypical soulmark on his left wrist.

And then Detective Decker had come along, and thrown a whole toolbox of spanners into the works. Surely, there was some kind of conspiracy at work, arranging circumstances expertly to pull him towards her - or maybe push him. He wasn’t sure. Delilah’s death was the spark of it all. He’d felt the rebirth of that part of him that had lived and breathed punishment, that had been nothing but cruelty and fury for millennia uncounted. He’d looked into the face of Delilah’s killer, one petty human who could never even conceive of what it was to feel _real_ rage, or vengeance, and the Devil took his first breath in five years.

It was in the midst of his moment of renaissance, that Detective Chloe Decker of the LAPD had marched purposefully up to his piano and asked his name. Looking into her eyes had been a revelation, in the biblical sense. Rapture and pain, really literal _pain._ He’d held her wrist for just a moment, examining his mark’s twin, and wondered what it was about this stranger, this miscellaneous human that (apparently) made her the Devil’s perfect match. 

She certainly didn’t seem too thrilled with him, which was interesting in and of itself. The few times he’d pictured what meeting his soulmate would be like, he’d imagined having to firmly rebuff ecstatic advances of someone who thought they’d found a happy-ever-after. But Detective Decker didn’t seem to want to talk about it at all, or even acknowledge it. After she’d asked her questions about Delilah’s death, she’d turned to leave with clear dismissal in her eyes, and he’d felt a sudden stab in his gut, something like panic. After some persuasion, she’d handed over her phone number, with a reluctance that would have been funny in other circumstances - he’d never had to persuade _anyone_ to give him their number before. He didn’t know why it was suddenly so important to him that he spoke to her again. It had never been the plan. But suddenly, he found he needed to know - why _her?_

He also didn’t know why, when he’d tracked the trail of Delilah’s killer to the doorstep of her ex-boyfriend, 2Vile, he called the detective. It simply...felt like something he wanted to do, and Lucifer was never one to resist an impulse. He didn’t even have a phone, instead charming the use of one out of an obliging and now slightly besotted passer-by. The detective had seemed just as confused by his call as he was, and outright hostile when she turned up at the gaudy Hollywood mansion a few minutes later. She barely looked at him, just barking orders at several armed men with a sense of command that Lucifer couldn’t help but admire.

It was delightful being arrested by her, and even more delightful to slip out of the little amateur-hour handcuffs she’d put on him, and to watch the subtle strains of confusion and suspicion creep into her controlled expression when he held them out to her. Everything was going swimmingly, as far as he was concerned, until he encountered the steel bear trap that apparently housed the detective’s mind. She looked right in his eyes and - nothing. Not a single secret let slip. Lucifer had met his fair share of complicated cases, but no one - _no one_ \- in however the hell many millennia it was, had ever been able to look him right in the eye and decline his invitation to spill their deepest secrets like coughing water from their lungs.

She didn’t seem to be taking him seriously, though, so on the principle that he would never get to the bottom of this soulmate business unless she really understood _exactly_ how impossible it all was, he did the first thing he could think of, and simply lifted her car a few feet off the ground. A bit of a risk, certainly, but she was taking it admirably well, even if she didn’t believe him quite yet.

They pulled up at some red brick, brutalist atrocity in the suburbs that seemed to be a school, if the swarms of larval humans surrounding it were any indication.

“Alright,” said Detective Decker, unbuckling her seatbelt, “wait here.”

“With pleasure,” he muttered with fervency. “I despise children.”

After the detective had hurried into the building, Lucifer let himself out of the car, leaning against the door. The high-pitched shrieks of the little horrors were piercing, and he dug out his cigarettes with a grimace. There was an uncomfortable tug under his sternum which he didn’t recognise, and although negligible, it was insistent. He suddenly had the inexplicable impulse to follow the detective into the school, which was, of course, completely irrational. The thought of being in close quarters with that many screaming children practically made him nauseous. Still, there it was, annoying and persistent.

He flicked irascibly at his lighter and tried to ignore the feeling, until a shapely behind wending its way up the school steps caught his eye. Well. He couldn’t avoid going in _now,_ could he? It would be practically an offense to pass up an opportunity that attractive. Abandoning his cigarette, Lucifer followed in the woman’s wake up the steps, and promptly lost her in the first labyrinthine hall he stepped into. Damn.

With both willowy business-blonde and his short and mulish detective having disappeared into the elementary school ether, Lucifer sat down with a sigh on one of the inconveniently small benches lining the hallway, deciding that staying out of the way of these various scuttling creatures was probably his best bet, until the detective came and found him. He’d just retrieved another cigarette and flicked open his lighter, when a small voice piped up from beside him.

“I don’t think you’re allowed to smoke in here.”

Turning, he found a dark haired child observing him critically. “Oh, dear. What _will_ become of me?” He remarked sarcastically, and lifted his cigarette to light it.

“My mother’s a police officer,” the child persisted assuredly, shoes swinging half a foot off the floor. “She could arrest you.”

“Oh!” Surely this, then, was the detective’s errant spawn. He snapped his lighter shut, looking at her with more interest. “I think I might know your mother.”

“What’s your name?” Asked the child, unimpressed.

“Lucifer.”

She lit up with glee, wide brown eyes nearly taking her whole face. “Like the Devil?”

“Exactly.” It was quite a gratifying reaction. Most grown-ups gave him very odd looks when he introduced himself.

“My name’s Beatrice, but everybody calls me Trixie.”

“That’s a hooker’s name,” he informed her kindly. Someone should tell her, after all.

“What’s a hooker?”

“Ask your mother. So, why are you in trouble?”

“See that girl over there?” He did. “She was bullying me. She created a fake Snapchat account and used it to make fun of me.” Lucifer didn’t really know what that meant but it seemed a serious transgression. “So...I kicked her in the no-no-touch-touch square.” In response to his confusion, the child pointed at his groin and he got the idea.

“Oh! Oh, I see. Well played.” There was a candor to Beatrice’s confession that Lucifer found quite sympathetic. Who was he to criticise this small human meting out her own punishments? “Well played, indeed.” He went to stand, thinking of giving just a little _taste_ of what it was to fear damnation to the sullen-looking bully across the hallway. Suddenly, the child lunged with a squeak, too quickly for him to leap out of the way, and seized his left wrist in her small, sticky grasp. 

Startled, Lucifer narrowly avoided yelping in surprise when he found himself sitting down again rather abruptly, Beatrice’s persistent little fist refusing to relinquish its grip.

“That’s my mommy’s mark!” She practically crowed, eyes gleaming. His sleeve had ridden up as he’d moved to stand, and the distinctive heptagram was unmistakably displayed.

“Erm,” he said intelligently, not sure what to do. 

“Are you Mommy’s soulmate?” The child demanded, voice loud and unregulated in her excitement.

A door opened a few yards away, and the detective walked out into the hall, frown quickly slipping into place as she caught sight of him. “Lucifer? What the hell are you doing?”

“It’s not my fault!” He protested, trying to extricate his wrist from Beatrice’s sticky fingers with a grimace of distaste.

“Mommy, he’s your soulmate, did you know? Have you met him?” She was hopping down from the bench, pulling him insistently after her as she marched towards her mother.

The detective was glaring at him as though he’d _meant_ for this to happen. “I told you to wait in the car.”

“Believe me,” he said through gritted teeth as he tried to shake off her daughter. “This was _not_ intentional. I can’t be held responsible if your spawn is like a bloody hellhound after the scent.”

Beatrice grabbed her mother’s wrist and held it next to Lucifer’s. “It’s the same!” She insisted.

With a sigh of resignation, the detective leaned down to gently disengage her daughter’s hand from his wrist. “I know, monkey, Lucifer and I already met last night.”

“You did?” Beatrice sounded indignant.

“Yeah. We can talk about it tonight, I promise, but right now Mommy has to work, so let’s try and find out where Daddy’s got to, okay?” Holding her daughter’s hand, the detective led the way out of the school.

“Trixie, I know that you’re excited about my big soulmate news, but I need you to not say anything about it to Daddy yet, okay?”

“Why not?” Asked her pint-sized child. Lucifer was quite curious about that too, but felt this was one of those rare occasions when keeping his mouth shut might be the better option, so he just followed behind without a word.

“Because it’s really important news, and Daddy might feel hurt if I didn’t tell him myself. Okay?”

“Okay.” The child sighed tragically, but had a glint in her eye. “Does this mean I get a chocolate cake?”

“ _If_ you don’t say anything about it to Daddy, then yes, we can go by Izzie’s tomorrow and get you a _slice_ of chocolate cake, for dessert.”

“The good kind, with white chocolate buttons?” Lucifer’s eyebrows lifted, amused by the child’s negotiation.

“The kind with the buttons,” the detective agreed, and looked up as a man approached them. Her expression tightened, and Lucifer decided instantly that he disliked him.

“Hi, Daddy,” chirped the child.

“Hi, munchkin,” greeted the funny little monkey man with a gormless grin. This, Lucifer concluded, must be the prattish ex.

“Wow, shocker, you’re late,” the detective said, and Lucifer was silently impressed by the truly scathing depth of resigned contempt she managed in just one sentence.

“Come on, give me a break. I'm putting a case to bed.” The child, looking from one to the other, put her fingers to her ears.

“Right, like I'm not working a case, too. Oh, yeah, the one you tried to _steal_ from me.” 

“You mean the open and shut one. You _did_ open and shut it, right?” Detective Douche, as Lucifer mentally dubbed him, raised his eyebrows condescendingly.

The detective stood her ground with laudable stubbornness. “I'm being diligent, Dan. It's a high-profile case.”

“Exactly, which is why you need to be smart about it.”

Bristling, Lucifer decided he’d had enough of this ingrate. “She _is_ smart. You're the dimwit.” He nodded to Beatrice. “Perhaps you should refrain from arguing in front of the child. It's unbecoming.” 

Detective Douche puffed out his chest like a brave little baboon and stepped closer with an ugly sound of incredulity. “I don't know whether to laugh or to shoot you.” Clearly he felt this was a very impressive threat.

“Surprise me,” Lucifer smirked, very much hoping Detective Douche would take his shot.

“Isn't he funny, Daddy?” Put in the child, but at that moment the detective inserted herself between them, the tips of her fingers on his chest, pressing him backwards and away from her douchey ex. 

“Stop it, both of you.” Then she turned to Lucifer, eyeing him nervously. _“Don’t do anything,”_ she mouthed, and he blinked. What did she think he was going to do to her insufferable little ex? He wasn’t sure what he’d done to make her think he’d hurt anyone. Surely lifting a car with one hand couldn’t be that worrying?

The detective hurriedly sent off her offspring with Detective Douche (leaving him to field the child’s parting question: “What’s a hooker?”), and there was a moment of slightly awkward silence between them.

“I think she likes you.”

  
He looked at her carefully. She didn’t seem to be afraid of him, but perhaps in showing her such a clear demonstration of his...inhumanness, it had been too much, too soon. Oddly, Lucifer discovered that it _bothered_ him to think that she might be afraid. He cleared his throat. “Yes, well. What’s not to like?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed, please do leave me a comment, and I'll see you all next chapter!


	5. Chapter 5

Lucifer was quiet as they left the school, and even got into the back seat of her car without comment or complaint. He still watched her, gaze frank and unabashed, but he didn’t pepper her with questions. It was at least forty-five minutes’ drive to the office of Delilah’s therapist, and his silence was putting Chloe more on edge than his socially-oblivious nosiness had.

“Are you afraid of me, Detective?” He asked abruptly.

“What? No, of course not.” The answer was knee-jerk, and she didn’t think about it until she met his curious gaze in the mirror. Instantly, she remembered why she perhaps  _ should _ be afraid of him, and bit the inside of her cheek, reassessing. She didn’t want to lie, that wouldn’t be helpful to either of them. “Maybe a little bit, actually.”

Lucifer just nodded, directing his gaze out of the window as though that was the end of the matter. Inexplicably, Chloe felt as though she’d been unfair. Which made no sense - a violent, spoiled and clearly oversexed club owner who could lift a car with one hand and claimed to be Satan himself was someone she had every right to be wary of. True, he hadn’t done anything to make her think he would hurt her, but she couldn’t help her instinctive reaction. For a moment, Chloe thought about trying to explain all of that, but the words eluded her.

“Why you, I wonder?” He mused, with the air of someone who wasn’t really expecting an answer.

Blinking at him in the rearview, Chloe tried to figure out where his mind had gone. “Why me, what?”

“I mean, of all the humans I’ve met, in all the ages I’ve lived through - or at least those during which I’ve visited,” he amended, meeting her gaze, “why you, specifically?” 

She squinted. “What, are you immortal or something?”

“Yes, obviously,” he brushed it aside. “So what is it about you?” Tipping his head to one side, Lucifer regarded her. “Did my father send you?”

“What?”

“Well, you’ve never happened to sprout wings, have you? Had any illnesses from which you’ve miraculously recovered? Near death experiences, that sort of thing?”

“Sprout...wings…? No, Lucifer,  _ obviously  _ I’ve never done any of that. That’s ridiculous.”

“Nothing ridiculous about it. Do  _ you  _ have an explanation for our situation?”

“No, but I’m not about to blame divine intervention or whatever, either. That’s just stupid.”

“Not if you’re me,” he muttered, and returned to looking out the window, expression darker than she had seen before.

“So if you’re the devil - and just to be clear, you’re  _ not, _ I still don’t believe that,” she added hastily, “then why wouldn’t the devil - you - be in Hell?”

“I’m on holiday.”

Chloe felt a stab of annoyance. “If you’re not even gonna  _ pretend _ to give me real answers --”

“It’s the truth,” he insisted, “Hell can get very gloomy, what with all the dark and the damned and the screams and the ash that gets everywhere. And I mean  _ everywhere.”  _ He gave a theatrical shudder. “So every few decades - in Earth’s time, anyway - I pop up for a little vacation. Earth is always fun, all you humans and the delicious ways you find to deny yourselves what you truly desire. No one expects me to rule anything up here, which I never wanted to do anyway. Being King of Hell wasn’t my idea. So, here I am,” there was a self-satisfied amusement in his voice. “I’m taking me-time.”

“Why L.A.?” 

“Oh, any number of reasons. The irony of the name was certainly entertaining. I hadn’t been here since the twenties and I wanted to see how it had changed. And of course, Los Angeles has made itself notorious, even in Hell, for being the pinnacle of humans’ capacity for soaring new heights of desire. People in this city are so grotesquely, hubristically  _ hungry _ , it’s like Babel all over again. How could I  _ possibly  _ stay away?” He caught her eye in the mirror, and just for a moment Chloe saw what he did. It was as though there was a vastness in him, an absurd infinity hiding in a body and a Tom Ford suit. He grinned, she blinked, and the impression was gone. Still, he was convincing in the part he played, she’d give him that.

“But truthfully, I’m in L.A. mostly for the weather. Hell is like a sauna permanently set to ‘ash’, so any temperature below scorching seems chilly to me, and my demon hates the cold, though she’d never admit to it.”

“Your demon? What, is that a metaphor?” Chloe didn’t even know why she asked, of course it wasn’t going to be a metaphor.

“No, my very literal demon bodyguard and right-hand-woman. I let her stay topside with me five years ago, at her request. Now she’s getting cross, of course, because she’s bored of having all the sex she can eat and wants to go back to torturing souls. Or something. I don’t know, demons are always cross about something and it’s always tedious.”

Biting back an incredulous laugh, Chloe decided she might as well humour him. Either he really believed what he was saying and was  _ that  _ deep in his own delusion, or he had constructed this elaborate fantasy to cover up something else. Whichever it was, going along with it might get him to lower his guard, and let her learn something about who he really was. She wished now that she’d given into the temptation to do a more thorough background check last night. Apart from the routine checks she’d perform for any witness to a crime, confirming his name (it really  _ was  _ Lucifer Morningstar), legal status as a resident of California (since 2011) and criminal record (clean), she had forced herself to stop, and not dig any further into his life. She didn’t want to know, she told herself.

But now here she was, talking to her soulmate about what his demon companion thought of the weather in SoCal - her soulmate, who was quite possibly superhuman, she reminded herself, and felt that jolt of unreality all over again.

As though he’d read where her thoughts had turned, Lucifer piped up again. “Out of interest, who or what  _ do  _ you think I am, if you don't believe that I'm the Devil? What, in your opinion, could do the things you've seen me do?”

“Um," Chloe said, floundering a bit. "I don't know. Superhero?”

“Superhero,” he repeated, deadpan. 

“Yeah. I mean, a really obnoxious one, but you’ve got the whole morally ambiguous vigilante justice thing. Very Daredevil. Though with less acrobatics, I guess.”

“I've never been more insulted in my life,” though he sounded more entertained than anything else. "I’m not a fictional character, Detective. And besides, if I was a superhero, I'd be doing a terrible job of keeping my secret identity under wraps, wouldn't I?”

“Super _ villain, _ then?”

“Some might say the Devil is the original supervillain. But, no. Think of the level of admin that would require - horrible,” he shuddered. “I barely have the patience to meet with my accountant.”

“One of the X-Men?”

“Again, fictional.”

“Mutant in general?”

“From my point of view you  _ humans _ are the mutants. Dad based your species’ prototype on my siblings and me, you know.”

“Experimented on by the government and/or a mad scientist?"

“Please, the government  _ wishes _ they could make  _ this _ ,” he sniffed, waving a hand regally down his body.

“Vampire? Werewolf? Alien?”

He levelled a withering look at her. “And if I said yes, you'd be more willing to believe in any of these than in the simple truth - that I'm the Devil?”

_ “Are _ you a vampire, werewolf or alien?”

He sighed, head dropping back against the seat. “No, I am  _ not,  _ Detective.”

She admired the handsome length of his throat in the rearview mirror with a small smile on her lips, before realizing what she was doing. Snapping her eyes back to the road, Chloe tightened her grip on the wheel and forced her thoughts back to less forbidden territories.

*

“Was your offspring planned or a mistake?” Lucifer asked, stirring sugar into a cup of coffee from the machine outside Dr. Martin’s office.

“Planned, sort of,” Chloe answered, too surprised to be defensive about her life choices as Lucifer handed her the cup and saucer without a word. She took a sip automatically. “How do you know how I like my coffee?”

“Oh, I can always tell how people like it.” Smiling lasciviously, he poured himself a cup as she rolled her eyes. He sat down next to her. “You know, I've never understood the human desire to procreate.”

“That's probably a good thing.”  _ Could  _ he even have kids if he wasn’t completely human? It seemed too personal for her to ask, even if he apparently had no standards for privacy or appropriate conversation.

Lucifer wasn’t finished. “I mean, children are hideous little creatures, terrible, taxing burdens.” He caught her scathing look. “Oh, um, yours is fine,” he amended hastily. “I mean, you know, nothing to crow about, but nothing to be too embarrassed about, either, so that's quite good, isn't it?” He folded his hands over the point of his knee with the pleased air of someone who had bestowed a compliment.

“Are you at all aware of how dickish you sound?”

“No,” he said without batting an eyelash. “But speaking of dicks…” Leaning in close, he stared into her eyes with what was probably supposed to be a piercing gaze. “Why was that ex-husband of yours pressuring you to close the case?”

She squinted, mocking his expression. “Are you trying to do your weird trick on me?  _ Again? _ I thought you said it didn’t work.”

With a sigh of frustration, Lucifer leaned back. “Can’t hurt to try. If at first you don’t succeed, et cetera, et cetera.”

The door to Dr. Martin’s office opened and a blonde woman, pristine and petite, stepped out. “Okay, Detectives, I'll see you now.”

“Thank you,” said Chloe, putting down her coffee cup.

Lucifer gave her an excited grin as Dr. Martin went back into her office. “Ooh - ‘Detectives’.” She rolled her eyes with a smile.

*

“Dr. Martin, I'd like to ask you a few questions about Delilah.” She tried to catch the doctor’s attention as her perfectly coiffed head swung distractedly between Chloe and Lucifer. What was up with her?

Lucifer wasn’t helping. “You're thinking about it, aren't you?” It was said with an annoying, smug little smile.

“What?” Doctor Martin seemed to realize she’d been gazing, enraptured, for far longer than was appropriate.

“Yes, I wouldn't recommend it,” continued Lucifer cheerfully. “I'm like walking heroin. Very habit-forming. It never ends well.”

Chloe looked between them. “I'm sorry, do...do you two know each other?”

“No, no, but I know that look,” he explained with a wink at Doctor Martin, who, now that her odd enthralment had been pointed out, seemed to be working hard to pull her prim, professional persona back together.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” she denied with a shake of her head.

“That is interesting,” continued Lucifer regardless, turning towards Chloe so he could scrutinise her. “Because...you don't look at me that way.” His eyes raked her, curious and, she thought, a little unsettled.

“What way?” She asked suspiciously.

“With carnal fascination. It’s funny, you’d think being my soulmate would have the opposite effect - carnal fascination out the wazoo.”

Chloe scowled and was about to tell him how full of shit he was, when Dr. Martin broke in suddenly. “You two are soulmates?” She was looking with some embarrassment at Chloe, now. “I’m sorry, I had no idea.”

“Oh, no! No, it’s not - it’s nothing like that.” Chloe nearly tripped over herself to correct the doctor’s assumption. “We’re not - we just met yesterday.”

“But the two of you - work together?” Dr. Martin’s eyebrows drew together in confusion.

“Not exactly, I’m a detective with the LAPD, Mr. Morningstar is --” she shot him a look. “Assisting me. Just on this case.”

“The thing is, Doctor, neither of us especially want a soulmate,” volunteered Lucifer candidly. “But the matter’s complicated by the fact that neither of us had a soulmark until five years ago, when suddenly, boom, blinding pain and  _ voilà,” _ he gestured with a flourish at his wrist. Only the uppermost tip of the star’s black rays poked beyond his cuff. “Made-to-order soulmate, impossible as that should be. And that’s without even approaching the problem of  _ how _ this could have happened between a mortal and the Devil.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, yes, should have mentioned - I’m the Devil. The Lord of Darkness himself.”

“Is that a joke?” Asked Doctor Martin, with what Chloe considered remarkable composure.

“No, not at a--”

“Yes! Yes, it absolutely is,” Chloe broke in quickly, before Lucifer could ramp back up. “Now can we please get back to the case?”

“In a moment,” Lucifer waved off her interjection, and looked at her intently. “Returning to  _ my  _ question; you’re  _ really  _ sure, detective, you feel no desire to throw me down and have your way with me? Dance the devil’s tango? Make the beast with two backs? Indulge in a little afternoon delight? Bump uglies?”

She glared at him, furious at his casual undermining of her hard-won professionalism. “No, I do  _ not,”  _ she hissed. “Do you have any idea how inappropriate you’re being right now?”

“No,” replied Lucifer baldly. “So my charms honestly do nothing for you?”

Chloe could feel her face heating, and wasn’t even sure whether it was humiliation or rage. “If you really want to have this conversation  _ now, _ then, no, I find you repulsive. Like, on a chemical level.” Whether or not that was strictly true, it was certainly how she felt just  _ now. _

“Hm. That’s fascinating,” said Lucifer, narrowing his eyes speculatively before turning back to the doctor. “Now, tell me, Linda--”

“You say it's fascinating,” broke in Doctor Martin, “and yet I can see that it disturbs you, doesn't it? Deeply,” she added, her attentive gaze scrutinising whatever she saw in Lucifer’s expression.

“Dr. Martin,” Chloe tried again in another valiant attempt to return everyone’s attention to the matter at hand. “We know that Delilah was having a clandestine affair with a wealthy married man, so if you just tell us his name, we’ll be on our way.”

“I'm sorry, I can't do that.” Dr. Martin shook her head with polite professionalism.

“Oh, she's one of the complex ones,” Lucifer leaned in close to say it, a glint in his eye, then shifted forwards on the couch to hold the doctor’s attention. “Linda, darling, why don't you tell me? Hmm?”

Although Chloe had expected another firm refusal to break confidentiality, instead a peculiar, girlish expression crossed Dr. Martin’s face. “Well...I can't.”

Lucifer didn’t say a word, just smiled a coaxing smile as he held her gaze and inclined his head, hands linked together over his knee.

“I want to, but I  _ can’t.” _ Something...very odd was happening to Dr. Martin. It was like she was having one half of a conversation that Chloe couldn’t hear, and looking at Lucifer as though his eyes alone were prying the information from her mind. “Oh...you’re the devil!” Laughed the doctor a little deliriously, and just for a moment Chloe’s heart jumped into her throat.

“Correct,” Lucifer said with a smug little chuckle, and she pushed back at herself sternly. It was just a figure of speech. Don’t be stupid. “Now, come on, Dr. Martin. I know you want to.”

Dr. Martin seemed to be having a hard time functioning. “Oh, man, and it's really,  _ really  _ juicy, too.”

“Ooh, I  _ bet  _ it is,” Lucifer commiserated, conspiratorial as he leaned further forward.

“No, I can't.” The doctor’s head swayed drunkenly from one side to the other, and Chloe tilted her head towards Lucifer, speaking as low as she could.

“What did you do to her? Is this your - your trick? The one that didn’t work on me?” 

Lucifer, who had momentarily broken away from whatever weird, hypnotic thing he was doing to listen to her, nodded. “She's just reacting to me. I’m using her desires to pull the information that  _ I  _ want to the surface. It’s a more delicate process than just simply asking what a person desires, but I’ve been at this for a  _ very  _ long time.” The look she gave him must have communicated her skepticism, because he gave a dramatic sigh. “Look, just watch and learn, okay?” 

He turned back to Doctor Martin, who was gazing at him, tongue practically lolling right out of her mouth. “Right, the answer is yes, we can take a trip to pound town if we must,” Chloe’s eyes popped wide and she shot a startled glance at him. “But first, you're going to have to tell us, Linda, okay?”

Doctor Martin moaned, she actually  _ moaned, _ and something in her seemed to break free with a snap. “Okay! It’s Grey Cooper.”

“Grey Cooper?” Chloe raised her eyebrows. “Seriously? That _ is _ juicy.” Inhibitions now apparently decimated, the doctor nodded eagerly. Lucifer whined a bit about Delilah’s choice of sexual partner, but Chloe wasn’t paying too much attention, her brain already skipping ahead with this new lead. “Thank you very much, Dr. Martin. We'll be in touch.” She jerked her head at Lucifer. “All right, we got to go.”

“Yes, of course, but I…” He grabbed her arm as she went to stand. “I made a deal, so I'm going to have to hold up my end of the bargain. If you wouldn't mind waiting outside?”

She had to take a moment to process his meaning, then her mouth dropped open indignantly. “Are you seriously talking about having sex with her right now?”

“It won’t take long,” he assured her with an assessing glance at Doctor Martin, who had gone pink in the face and was practically wriggling where she sat. She kept glancing from Chloe to Lucifer and back again, opening and closing her mouth as though she wanted to weigh in, but seemed to be trying desperately to control herself.

“I’m _not_ waiting around for you to - _that!”_ Chloe hissed. “Do what you want, but I’m leaving. To do my _job.”_ With a final glare, she marched out of the office. Behind her, she heard Lucifer follow, giving Doctor Martin the promise of a raincheck. 

Outside the building, he slid into the car, next to her this time. “You’re awfully crabby for a detective who just got a lead. Want to share what’s put a kink in your kazoo?”

“Nope,” she said with finality, not caring to examine it herself. “Put your seatbelt on.”

**Author's Note:**

> That's all for now - I'll update soon. Please do leave me a comment if you enjoyed!


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